Oliver Seibt studied musicology (with a specialization in ethnomusicology), cultural anthropology, and Japanese studies at the University of Cologne and after the premature death of his supervisor Rüdiger Schumacher gained his doctorate at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. His dissertation was published under the title Der Sinn des Augenblicks: Überlegungen zu einer Musikwissenschaft des Alltäglichen in 2010.

An Uchida fellowship by the Japan Foundation allowed him to collect materials for his Magister thesis on the Japanese domestication of “Western popular music” during a three-months stay in Japan in 1996. After having worked as a freelancer for EMI Music Germany (1998-2007) and as a research and teaching associate ("Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at the universities of Cologne (2000-2008) and Bern (2008-2009), he returned to Japan in 2010 for a three-months field research trip to the Tokyo visual-kei scene that was part of a multi-sited research project on the globalization of Japanese popular music he conducted as a post-doctoral research fellow of the DFG-Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg University (2009-2012). Before he was appointed assistant professor of cultural musicology at UvA in 2016, he worked as interim professor for ethnomusicology at the universities of Cologne (2013) and Frankfurt am Main (2013-2015), and as a guest professor at the University of Vienna (2015-16).

As a guest lecturer, he has also taught at the universities of Maiduguri (Nigeria), Saarbrücken, Giessen, Bremen, Zürich, and Utrecht, at the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt am Main, the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim, and at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Oliver Seibt is co-founder of the German-speaking branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-D-A-CH) and served as its general secretary from 2012 to 2016. Since September 2019, he acts as chair of the Benelux branch of IASPM.

His current research interests are in (the globalization of) Japanese popular music, everyday life music studies, and the role of the imaginary in musicking.

Publications (a selection)

* 2020 "Introduction: Deutschland! - Echt Jetzt? German Popular Music's Complicated Relationship with German Identity", in Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge Global Popular Music Series), ed. by Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-Emil Wickström. New York and London: Routledge (together with Martin Ringsmut and David-Emil Wickström).

* 2020 "Japonism 2.0: German visual-kei Fans, Tokio Hotel, and the Popular Music Genre That Must Not Exist", in Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge Global Popular Music Series), ed. by Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-Emil Wickström. New York and London: Routledge.

2018

Seibt, O. (2018). The (musical) imaginarium of Konishi Yasuharu, or how to make Western music Japanese 1. In R. Strohm (Ed.), Studies on a Global History of Music: A Balzan Musicology Project (pp. 157-176). (SOAS Musicology Series). London: Routledge. [details]

2020

Seibt, F. O. (Accepted/In press). Japonisme 2.0: German visual-lei fans, Tokio Hotel, and the popular music genre that must not exist. In Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music Routledge.

Seibt, F. O., Ringsmut, M., & Wickström, D-E. (Accepted/In press). Introduction: Deutschland! - Echt jetzt? German Popular Music's Complicated Relationship with German Identity. In Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge Global Popular Music Series). Routledge.

Media appearance

Talk / presentation

Seibt, O. (speaker) (21-9-2017). Travelogues From the World Behind the Mirror: Where "Western" visual-kei Fans Actually Head to When Boarding a Plane to Japan, University of Utrecht, Department of Musicology.

Seibt, O. (speaker) (12-5-2017). Travelogues From the World Behind the Mirror: Where "Western" visual-kei Fans Actually Head to When Boarding a Plane to Japan, University of Groningen, Department of Arts, Culture and Media.

Seibt, O. (speaker) (21-4-2016). The Musical Imaginarium of Konishi Yasuharu, or How to make Western music Japanese, Musicology Colloquium Series, University of Amsterdam.

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